Are IRIS Corporation Berhad's (KLSE:IRIS) Fundamentals Good Enough to Warrant Buying Given The Stock's Recent Weakness?

IRIS Corporation Berhad (KLSE:IRIS) has had a rough month with its share price down 17%. But if you pay close attention, you might find that its key financial indicators look quite decent, which could mean that the stock could potentially rise in the long-term given how markets usually reward more resilient long-term fundamentals. Particularly, we will be paying attention to IRIS Corporation Berhad's ROE today.

Return on equity or ROE is an important factor to be considered by a shareholder because it tells them how effectively their capital is being reinvested. In other words, it is a profitability ratio which measures the rate of return on the capital provided by the company's shareholders.

See our latest analysis for IRIS Corporation Berhad

How Do You Calculate Return On Equity?

The formula for ROE is:

Return on Equity = Net Profit (from continuing operations) ÷ Shareholders' Equity

So, based on the above formula, the ROE for IRIS Corporation Berhad is:

6.3% = RM22m ÷ RM345m (Based on the trailing twelve months to March 2023).

The 'return' is the amount earned after tax over the last twelve months. So, this means that for every MYR1 of its shareholder's investments, the company generates a profit of MYR0.06.

What Is The Relationship Between ROE And Earnings Growth?

Thus far, we have learned that ROE measures how efficiently a company is generating its profits. Depending on how much of these profits the company reinvests or "retains", and how effectively it does so, we are then able to assess a company’s earnings growth potential. Generally speaking, other things being equal, firms with a high return on equity and profit retention, have a higher growth rate than firms that don’t share these attributes.

IRIS Corporation Berhad's Earnings Growth And 6.3% ROE

At first glance, IRIS Corporation Berhad's ROE doesn't look very promising. We then compared the company's ROE to the broader industry and were disappointed to see that the ROE is lower than the industry average of 10%. Despite this, surprisingly, IRIS Corporation Berhad saw an exceptional 51% net income growth over the past five years. So, there might be other aspects that are positively influencing the company's earnings growth. For instance, the company has a low payout ratio or is being managed efficiently.

Next, on comparing with the industry net income growth, we found that IRIS Corporation Berhad's growth is quite high when compared to the industry average growth of 12% in the same period, which is great to see.